Books Turned Into Movies: The Good and The Bad

David Lynch's Dune was probably the worst. He could've adapted the text to a more exciting fare (why voice out the character's thoughts when actions and visuals can explain it much better?) instead we treated to a mind-numbing bore. A great novel wasted.

The best? I'll go for Trainspotting. Welsh's prose takes getting used to kaya I was surprised by the watchability and entertainment value of Danny Boyle's screen version.

Comments

Oh yeah "Silence Of The Lambs" was a great book to movie conversion... They followed the spirit of the book to the letter and Hopkins was one mean Lecter... Trivia: Did you know that in the book version Lecter had 11 fingers ???

Gawd, most of Stephen King's works which turned into movies were really bad. Of course there are exceptions like The Stand, The Shining, Misery, Shawshank Redemption. Others became B-movies. :( I agree with Kamats, the book is always better than the movie. (Anyone dare to contend? )

Midnight....and Evil book was superb. Kaya na-engganyo ako panoorin yung movie when it was shown at the UP Film Center. Pero na-dismaya ako while watching the film and walked out. Sayang. Ako na lang kaya mag-direct nun.

GREENEAGLE : I beg to disagree...JOY LUCK CLUB was beautiful!!!!! I've seen it four times and i cried each time. probably cause i can relate to it so much cause i'm chinese too.

But the book still was SO much better.

ZEN and KAMATS: I agree...most books are better than the movie adaptations. JURASSIC PARK pa lang was so much better to read thn to watch eh.

PEPS: sorry...i'm very particular with names, but Jodie Foster is spelled that way, not with a Y. sorry, ha....kasi pati ako when my name is misspelled, i get really annoyed. hehe...pasensiya ka na. OC-OC ako eh.

The Princess Bride - the book is much better than the movie, but I rather enjoyed the movie and think they're both great. It's a pity they couldn't include a lot of the nuances in the book -- but isn't it always like that?

The Body, a short story by Stephen King, became Stand By Me, the movie. The book was much darker, but I loved the movie!

The Last Unicorn is an animated film adapted from a fantasy novel. Watch it! Read it! Galing pareho! Sobra! (Biased ako kasi favorite ko to eh...)

Lord of the Flies was pretty bad. Not only did they change a lot of things, the interpretation didn't do the book any justice at all. Just read the book - you can make a better movie in your head! (Balthazar Getty was cute in the movie, though...)

One exception that I can think of to the rule of movie version not living up to novel is PRESUMED INNOCENT. I actually enjoyed the movie and appreciated the "twists" and "turns" in plot and story. Then I read the book. The "praise for the book" of course called it "a real page-turner!!!" that you "couldn't put down!!!". It supposedly had "a surprise on every page!!!". It was basically a boring, dragging novel that had one surprise, at the end. And since I'd seen the movie, the surprise was anything but. I'm afraid it's a made-for-movie story. I've a feeling Scott Turrow woke up one day with a great idea for a surprise ending. Then he wrote a whole book to set it up. Two hours (even less) is enough to set up the ending, and more effectively and entertainingly besides, in a movie.

TRAINSPOTTING fans, you may want to check out (if you haven't, yet) another Ewan McGregor starrer, A LIFE LESS ORDINARY. As I understand it, the movie came before the book. John Hodge (who also wrote the screenplay for TRAINSPOTTING) wrote the novel based on his own screenplay for the film. Movie and book are (as such?) amazingly similar.